Faultlines have the potential to significantly disrupt team performance due to the creation of intergroup bias. In geographically dispersed teams, given the combination of dispersed locations and other diversity characteristics, faultlines are potentially a major issue that needs to be more fully understood. This study examines the impact of faultlines on geographically dispersed teams and how problems caused by faultlines can be resolved. An experimental study of 40, four-person student teams finds that perceived faultlines heighten conflict and impair decision process quality. The findings also suggest that self-disclosure via weblogs and task elaboration can repair damage caused by faultlines. However, self-disclosure does not have a direct effect on reducing faultlines; the relationship is moderated by social attraction. That is, as team members disclose personal information to out-group members and out-group members are attracted to such disclosure, perceived faultlines are diminished. This study also finds that even in teams with strong perceived faultlines, team members are still able to exchange and integrate perspectives if they have a better understanding of their out-group members via self-disclosure. The negative consequence of faultlines therefore is eased when task elaboration occurs during task execution. Implications of these coping mechanisms for teams with faultlines in organizations are discussed.

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An emerging class of intelligent tools that we term Digital Productivity Assistants (DPAs) is designed to help workers improve their productivity and keep their work-life balance in check. Using personalised work-based analytics it raises awareness of individual collaboration behaviour and suggests improvements to work practices. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the role of personalised work-based analytics in the context of (improving) individual productivity and work-life balance. We present an interpretive case study based on interviews with 28 workers who face high job demands and job variety and our own observations. Our study contributes to the still ongoing sensemaking of AI, by illustrating how DPAs can co-regulate human work through technology affordances. In addition to investigating these opportunities of partnering with AI, we study the perceived barriers that impede DPAs' potential benefits as partners. These include perceived accuracy, transparency, feedback, and configurability, as well as misalignment between the DPA's categorisations of work behaviour and the categorisations used by workers in their jobs.

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